On the long trip back from the trial, Norman Lewis drove slowly, squinting into a curtain of November rain. The road seemed to be a tightrope on which his balance was constantly threatened by the headlights of approaching cars; they loomed up blindingly and unexpectedly, like yesterday’s events in the courtroom.
When the verdict was brought in, he had stumbled from his seat in the rear, unable to start for home. He had lain in the hotel room all night, staring at a ceiling on which his memory painted two images; Brewster Pollock standing trial for murder — and Brewster Pollock writing Conditions of Serenity, giving to the world a great achievement in behaviorist psychology. The images had stayed with Norman; they were taunting him now, on the windshield of his car.
A shiver went through his thin small frame, reminding him of his body’s betrayal: it was no longer the cool detached flesh of a scientist, but a thing crawling with tensions. He told himself that he would drive it all out, this activity inside the skin, as soon as he regained his own environment.
Peering out at the road, he saw that finally he was approaching the neighborhood of Adirondack University. It did not occur to him to go to his apartment; the car, like an animal in sight of home, gathered speed and went to the Psychology Building. When he unlocked the front door, the tower bells were sending three deep tones into the soggy night.
He slumped against the inside of the door, breathing deeply of the sharp chalky scents. A hint of color returned to his cheeks, and in the pale inverted triangle of his face the gray eyes no longer squinted but were open to the dark. He thought of the first time he had known the peace of these halls, more than 20 years before. He had been a young man without friends or future, his eyes hooded against the threat of human contact but his mouth a soft cry for help. He had walked into Brewster Pollock’s classroom and discovered the armor of science, of the laboratory, and gradually, as if it were being smothered beneath a shield, his fear had seemed to die away.
He straightened and began to walk down the hall that had echoed his passage through the years, from undergraduate to lab assistant to research fellow. At the end of the hall was the reward of those years — his office, next to that of the Chairman, given to him when Dr. Pollock had made him his personal assistant.
He switched on the lights in his office. After his five-day absence to attend the trial the objects sprang into his vision eagerly — the trim rows of books and the orderly ranks of cabinets that housed the records of a decade of experiments. He permitted himself to stand for a moment, basking in the room’s familiarity, then he hung up his coat and took out the newspaper he had bought on the road. He went to his desk and began to reread the story of yesterday’s events in court — the incredible, unexpected testimony of the neurosurgeon from Chicago, the final statement by both attorneys, and the verdict.
Tension coiled through his body again and he flushed with shame. He told himself that the sensations would disappear, because he was going to make a scientific review of all the events that had led to yesterday, and to decide whether he could face a future without Dr. Pollock.
He began by reminding himself that no one could understand as he did. Others could see only the superficial facts of the crime. Dr. Ernest Vine had been found in his summer cottage with part of his brain blown away and his own gun lying close to his hand, wiped clean of all prints but his own. The physical evidence had made suicide a possibility, but neither a note nor a motive could be found. Instead, the police found a neighbor who had seen an out-of-state car and recalled part of its license; they also found a young couple who had been on the beach that night, and who had overheard the victim quarreling with someone around the time of death.
It had not taken the police long to discover that the car and the quarreling voice, and the fingerprints on the cottage desk and mantel, all belonged to Brewster Pollock.
Norman’s head dropped into his hands. The arrest, he thought — like everything else-had hinged on Dr. Pollock’s relationship with Ernest Vine. Their feud was so long-standing and bitter, and so well known in the profession, that the police had had no trouble in learning its full history. He himself had been questioned; he had geared his answers to the officers’ limited perspective.
He closed his eyes and found himself picturing Ernest Vine with part of his brain blown away. That brain, he thought, had been such an undesirable organ. It has persisted in ascribing to human behavior the dreary and erroneous catalogue of Freudian interpretations. It had derided Brewster Pollock at every step of his way, since their common days in graduate school. It had attacked Conditions of Serenity and denounced the book’s great plan for the world of the future. The world of today, Norman thought, was much better off without the negative exemplar of Ernest Vine’s brain.
He eased back in his chair, imagining that all such exemplars had been removed. Without the Freudians, he thought, there would be no talk of the “unconscious” and the “Id,” or of hereditary forces. There would be no mystical belief in the primacy and power of emotions. That view would become as archaic as the Nineteenth Century notion that men possessed something called “volition” and could choose their own actions.
He smiled. Without the Freudians, behaviorism would have, no real opposition. Psychology would become fully and finally scientific. Behavior would be regarded universally as a series of sensorimotor responses, conditioned by the environment. People would accept the fact of environmental conditioning; they would beg for a new world to be fashioned by Dr. Pollock.
The smile jerked from Norman’s face. Rain struck the window behind him like the rolling of tiny drums. What should I do? he thought. The answer came automatically: ask Dr. Pollock, and he groaned. I cannot function here, he cried to himself. Trembling, he rose and left the office, and found himself climbing to a room on the third floor.
Several high thin cries greeted him, and a soft white shape scuttled to the front of one of the cages. “Hello there,” he whispered, leaning on the cage for support.
Here in this room, he thought, were all of the conditions of serenity. A rat wanted only its pellet of food; it was not pushed into a spurious battle for wealth and fame. Men had named their “competitive jungle” after the animal kingdom, but in fact that jungle was the province of home sapiens. It was only men, their behavior reinforced by competitive exemplars, who clawed their way to success and waged every kind of battle, including war, because they were conditioned to the notion of outdoing one another. It was an environment, he thought heavily, that condemned murder yet reinforced man’s tendency to commit the act.
He closed his eyes, and when he finally opened them it seemed to him, in the dim light, that the rows of cages were the communes of the future and the scuttling white shapes inside of them were men. He looked down the vista, seeing a world from which all negative exemplars had been eliminated, a world of peace and blessed predictability, of behavior that was engineered to be always selfless and serene.
When the tower bells rang six times, like a distant summons, he moved to the door and went down the flights of stairs, his steps growing faster and more firm.
Back in his office he stared for a long time at the printed words that were framed and hung beside his desk. “Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior.” Watson’s words, he thought, were still the manifesto of behaviorism, even after 60 years, still the great cry of its battle. “The time seems to have come when psychology must discard all reference to consciousness; when it need no longer delude itself into thinking that it is making mental states the object of observation.”
Gradually he became aware that within him there were no more tremors. There was only the dead repressive calm that now permitted him to function.
He took paper from a drawer and began to write, the words flowing easily. When he had reread all the pages, he nodded with heavy finality. Slowly he wrote one more page, quite different from the others. Then he put all the pages into his brief case.
He checked his watch, saw that it was only eight o’clock, and began to look at the pile of mail and memos that had accumulated while he was away. There were a number of supply requisitions; mechanically he signed one of them. The pen froze in his hand. He saw that he had signed as he always did, using Dr. Pollock’s signature. He tore the requisition into tiny pieces and dropped them into the wastebasket.
The newspaper lay there, glaring up at him, announcing the fact of Dr. Pollock’s acquittal.
He reached for the telephone.
Brewster Pollock drove toward the University.
Damn them, he was thinking, addressing himself to the rain, to his colleagues, and to his ex-wife who had not yet called to congratulate him, and to the press, which, instead of trumpeting his innocence, had described the verdict as one of “reasonable doubt.”
He swung the car into the parking lot and leaped out. He was a tall man, graying and emaciated, whose bones seemed to jut out in angry protest against the confinement of his skin. By contrast his eyes were sunken and quiescent.
He stode down the empty halls of the Psychology Building and flung open the door to his office. “Well,” he demanded, “what’s so urgent that you call me over here on Sunday morning?”
“Welcome home,” said Norman quietly.
Brewster Pollock grunted. “What the hell is the big emergency?”
“The trial, the verdict. I must talk to you about them.”
“For God’s sake! You couldn’t wait till tomorrow?” Then Pollock remembered his empty apartment; he shrugged and tossed his raincoat into a chair. “As long as you’ve dragged me over here, make me some coffee.”
He watched Norman hang up the coat and open the door of the enclosed bar and kitchenette. Norman’s eyes, he thought, were glassy this morning, like two spots of polish on an old shoe. The notion amused him for a moment; then he remembered that he had last seen Norman in court. “So you heard it all,” he snapped. “Do you realize what Ernest Vine tried to do to me? He committed suicide and tried to frame me for murder!”
“Yes,” said Norman, putting water on to boil. “I heard your lawyer’s reconstruction of the crime.”
“That idiot! He thought I was guilty, right up to the moment when the neurosurgeon appeared.” Jangling the keys in his pocket, Pollock began to circle the desk. “Do you realize that Vine almost succeeded? The man was dying of a brain tumor, so he shoots himself in the head, just in the right place, in hopes there’ll be no sign of the tumor left. And there isn’t! Did you hear the coroner?” He mimicked a slow New England voice: “ ‘A man in perfect health, no medical reason for suicide.’ Idiot!”
Pollock flung his keys into a comer; they struck the walnut panel and thudded on the carpet. “All that history the prosecution dragged into court, all those witnesses who swore that Vine and I hated each other — well, those were swords with double edges. Maybe Pollock hated Vine, but it was vice versa, too. Enough to make him try to frame me for murder!”
Automatically Norman picked up the keys and put them on the desk. “But isn’t that just a theory? A possible explanation of what might have happened?”
“Don’t be imbecilic. Why else would Vine kill himself right after I’d been there? He couldn’t stand the thought of dying and letting Brewster Pollock have the last word.”
“Excuse me,” said Norman. “The water is boiling.” He prepared two cups of coffee and brought them to the desk, relieved that his hands were the steady instruments of science. When Pollock angled his body into the desk chair, Norman sat across from him. He cleared his throat. “Was it hard to find a neurosurgeon?”
Pollock shrugged. “The man appeared from nowhere two days ago. Vine had gone out to see him under another name, so the fool didn’t start connecting his patient with Vine until he read about the trial and saw Vine’s picture in the Chicago papers.”
“Perhaps I did not make my question clear. Was it hard to find a neurosurgeon who would perjure himself?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Norman leaned forward. “I know that you killed Ernest Vine.”
Pollock’s cup came down so sharply that drops of coffee beaded the desk.
“I thought the jury would find you guilty. I was certain of it. Then you produced the neurosurgeon and the brain-tumor story. I was — I was stunned. Of course, the jury was not in a position to understand the crime as I do.”
Norman took his brief case from the floor beside him and brought out the notes he had made earlier that morning. “I became certain of your guilt when Margaret was subpoenaed to testify for the prosecution.”
Pollock’s face was frozen in angles of shock. “Margaret?” he said blankly, as if he did not recognize his daughter’s name.
“Perhaps you have forgotten that I was here on the day of the crime. I know that Margaret was in this office with you for over an hour. I saw your behavior when she left. You must have set out immediately to see Ernest Vine.”
“Of course I did. I told the court I did.”
Norman nodded. “I did not know what Margaret had told you that day until she testified. Then I realized the degree to which the stimuli had been intensified. When you learned that your own daughter was rejecting your theories and planning to study with Vine, the conditioning was nearly complete.”
“What in hell,” said Pollock slowly, “are you talking about?”
“Your reaction pattern, and the final stimulus combination that elicited the response of killing Ernest Vine.” Norman looked up from his notes. “It has not been pleasant to watch the pattern developing. You and Vine existed in a competitive environment, to which your behavior adapted steadily.”
He consulted his notes once more. “You were competing with Vine for a position of maximum influence in the profession. As with all competitive behavior there was incipient violence, and that tendency was constantly reinforced by Vine’s attacks on your work. The competitive-aggressive environment was extended to include your personal sphere when Margaret made her announcement. This constituted a major new stimulus, so that by the time you found yourself in Vine’s physical presence that evening, the probability of violent action had increased enormously.”
Brewster Pollock shook his head as if recovering from a blast of sound. “My God! After what I’ve been through, you talk to me like this? You know me! You of all people should know that I’m innocent.”
“I am sorry you find it necessary to take that attitude. Surely I have earned the right to hear the truth.”
Patiently Norman turned back to his notes. “The final stimulus combination was achieved by the presence of the gun. When Vine showed it to you, boasting that he recently had driven off a prowler, you faced what you yourself have called the most potent of all stimuli to acts of violence. Naturally, you responded.”
Pollock clutched the edge of the desk. He felt that if he clutched it tightly enough he somehow could drive the fact of his innocence through the wood between them and into Norman’s awareness. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “It can’t be happening. You couldn’t be so asinine.”
Norman’s eyes retreated behind narrowed lids, like animals diving for cover. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’d better beg it.” Anger began to thaw Pollock’s features back into jeering mobility. “I thought they were fools in that courtroom but they’ve got nothing on you. Even my sophomores wouldn’t misapply a theory the way you have.”
“Misapply? Do you mean that I have made some error?”
Pollock mimicked him savagely. “Yes, I mean that you have made some error!”
“I fail to see where.”
“In the first place, and you’d better get back to first places, back to basics, you’re talking as if environmental conditions could elicit behavior absolutely, like a reflex. You’ve ignored the probabilistic nature of behavior. Environmental conditions only increase the likelihood of behavior.”
“But that is my point!” Norman leaned forward, his eyes wide once again. “By any statistical method we have ever used, the likelihood of your response on that night was so great as to become a virtual certainty.” He tapped his notes. “Your responses to Vine have always been violent. I catalogued them this morning, going back at least ten years, and I could recall no exceptions. Your verbal behavior at the mention of his name, your treatment of the student who argued with you about him, your response when he defeated you for the presidency of the association, your tearing up his articles and throwing his latest book down the incinerator — why, the reinforcement has been continual! Given a confrontation with Vine and the presence of a gun in the environment, the response was absolutely predictable.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Pollock snapped. “There would have been negative contingencies at work — cultural reinforcers and aversive stimuli. You couldn’t predict which force would dominate.”
Norman spoke stiffly. “Of course I could. I used the methodology of your own book, Conditions of Serenity.”
“I don’t give a damn what you used, you’re wrong. I did not kill Ernest Vine and that is final!”
“You had to kill him.”
“Don’t tell me what I had to do! I’m not one of the animals upstairs!”
Norman’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Your operant behavior was already violent, and environmental conditions were maximized for you that night. How could you have failed to kill Vine?”
“Because I didn’t do it, can’t you get that through your head? Yes, I’m glad he’s dead. I’ve wished he would die for years and I sure as hell was mad enough to kill him that night, but I never would really do it. Can’t you understand that?”
“How could you avoid it?”
“Because I never considered it seriously, I didn’t want to do it, I chose not to do it!”
Norman’s lips tightened into wires. “You chose not to kill him? You are claiming some inner means of controlling your own behavior? Some special organ” — he smiled contemptuously — “of volition?”
Pollock swore helplessly and turned away.
Briskly Norman folded his notes. “This corroborates my finding. If there was any margin of error or doubt, your verbal behavior has just removed it.”
Pollock cast about for some way to reach this creature, some pellet that would coax it back into its familiar cage. “You imbecile!” he finally screamed.
There was no verbal or facial response. Norman’s eyes seemed to be two gray opaque discs, impenetrable as steel. As if he were beating against them, Pollock slammed his fists on the desk. Sprays of coffee lurched into the air and fell back as trickles.
“I see,” said Norman, “that you are now conditioned to violence completely. It is what I suspected. Your behavior has adapted fully.” He reached into his brief case. “In the name of the great achievement which you have ceased to represent I regret what I must do.”
The blood drained from Pollock’s face as abruptly as if a plug had been pulled. “Where did you get that?”
“It’s yours. The gun from the safe. Afterwards I will wipe it and place it in your hand, just as you did with Vine.”
“Put it down. Have you gone crazy?”
“Why, no. I have planned everything carefully. This morning I prepared a suicide note, in your handwriting, so that your students and followers will be able to know the truth, to realize that you had become a negative exemplar. I believe that the note will satisfy the police. It is your confession to the act of killing Ernest Vine.”
“But I am innocent!”
“That,” said Norman, “is not scientifically possible.”
And serenely he pulled the trigger.